Rocky Mountain Redemption Read Online Free PDF

drawn to this young woman. Wanted to make sure she received the best care he could provide.
    Bracing his forearms on his legs, he monitored her breathing, watching her chest rise and fall in smallbreaths. All the while wondering what he was going to do with her once she was well. If he didn’t give her the job would she hightail it out of Boulder?
    It was painfully apparent that she needed help.
    And it was no secret that he desperately needed an assistant. But was he willing to hire a young woman he had a deep interwoven history with, yet, until a few hours ago, had never even met?
    Ben quietly crossed to the bedroom’s lace-draped window and peered outside through the cloudy panes. The snow had finally tapered off to a light dusting of flurries that glistened like tiny diamond chips in the morning sun. He squinted against the stark brightness, his eyelids drooping over his eyes, weighted by fatigue and by the bright glare spilling into the room.
    Kneading his forehead, his thoughts strayed to the past seven years. They’d tracked Max down several times, finding him in saloons, slouched at gaming tables like some permanent fixture. Though Ben had never met Callie—didn’t even know her name—Max had lamented about how he’d needed to play the tables to keep his demanding little woman clothed in finery and frills.
    Turning to glimpse the bleak condition of her ragged dress and threadbare cloak, he couldn’t imagine that anything of the sort had been true.
    Remorse regarding Max hovered over him like a coffin lid suspended, just inches from closing. He’d done his best to set Max’s feet on the straight and narrow, but Max had given the term maverick a whole new meaning, dodging responsibility at every turn, thumbing his nose at right living and common sense, and bucking hard against anyone who tried to bridle him. He was nothinglike the rest of the Drake boys, and for that Ben felt a guilt-laden weight of responsibility.
    Ben had promised his folks before they passed on that he’d see to his brothers. Make sure they turned out to be the fine, upstanding men his parents had intended.
    Moving over to the bed, he refreshed the compress at Callie’s chest, praying that it would ease her deep cough.
    When she stirred then dragged in a ragged breath in her sleep, he was grateful to see that it didn’t catch on another cough. With attentive medical care, she might just be all right. The idea of any other outcome made his throat go instantly tight. There was something vulnerable hidden behind the inflexible front she’d worn that begged for release, and he couldn’t ignore the strange desire he felt to be her liberator.
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    â€œYou’re going to do what?” Aaron protested, his voice likely cutting through the closed door to where he’d just peeked in at Callie.
    â€œKeep your voice down.” Ben shot his brother a glower of warning then tugged him farther into the waiting area. “I said, I’m thinking about giving her a job as a cook and housekeeper.”
    He glanced at the second-oldest brother, Joseph, whose brow creased in an unmistakable, disagreeing frown over his sightless eyes.
    His brothers’ forthright responses contrasted dramatically with the quiet, solemn grief they’d shown an hour ago when’d he’d broken the news of Max’s death. There were plenty of regrets to be had regarding Max. The tension-filled years preceding his disappearance. The betrayal prompting his leaving. And the futile times when Ben and Joseph had tried to coax Max home.
    All the years growing up hadn’t been that way, however. There’d been good times, when all five of them had roamed the backyard on stick horses, as though the ground yawned like some wide-open range. When they’d worked together with their father to build houses for the steady stream of settlers moving West. When they’d hunkered down in eager anticipation of